Behind the Scenes: Alex Honnold in Yosemite

Yosemite was one of the first places where climbers really dedicated their lives to just climbing, where the whole like dirtbag climbing culture came about, where people just lived in one place just to climb forever. For me especially, the rest of the world is where you go climbing to like have a good time and to learn and then Yosemite is where you come to test yourself. The first people to climb the big walls in Yosemite were basically going out in search of adventure in a way. They were having this big experience of like climbing into the unknown. You know they were exploring these huge walls. They had no idea what would happen and they were just going for it. Now to have that same sort of adventure you have to do things in a different style. You have to sort of like up the uncertainty in some way and so you know for me that means free soloing. For other people that might mean something else but it's sort of climbing in the same spirit of adventure, that same spirit of just like throwing yourself at a wall and sort of having an experience you know for better or worse. The thing with soloing is that it's not like a big adrenaline rush and at least it shouldn't be when you're climbing well. Soloing in some ways is more a matter of like demonstrating mastery, climbing perfectly. It shouldn't be like some big rush because it shouldn't feel like you're dodging the bullet or something. It shouldn't be like oh sweet I survived that solo that was so exciting. You know it should be like a very slow calm meditative process. Though I mean you could say that any exercise is sort of addictive because you get like endorphins just from exercising but I don't think that the actual act of soloing should be like this huge chemical rush.